Quote:
Originally Posted by dsvick
I find it incredible that we can look at something 3000 light years away and determine how massive it is!
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You'll note from the article that this star had a white dwarf companion. Any time two objects are orbiting each other, measuring the orbital period gives you an instant knowledge of the total mass of the system by a trivial application of Newton's law of gravity. All white dwarf stars have pretty much the same mass, so by subtracting that from the total you get the mass of the neutron star. Easy peasy maths
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